Thanks and Huge Apology to the OpenStreetMap Community

Two hours ago Steve Coast from OSM contacted us to let us know one of the OSM community members found what he thought was OSM data in our Chile database without attribution. Steve's crew and Waze's started investigating IMMEDIATELY across 3 continents and we had answers in 30 minutes.

What we found was a huge disappointment.; we indeed had OSM data which was not from a common base source and was clearly copied.

We have fantastic partners around the world who we partner with for local data. Unfortunately, our LATAM partner Location World had acquired data from an unreliable source who seems to have infringed on OSM, and Location World is now pursuing legal options against them. While we sort this out, we have pulled all of the Chile data from Waze. The data has been deleted from the database and should be gone from the Cartouche (our web editing interface) already. It will take 24-48 hours for the deletion to propagate through the system and down to the clients (sorry Chilean Wazers).

To be on the safe side, we are pulling all the data from this source, in other countries as well: Peru, Uruguay and parts of Argentina, and it should be removed shortly.

The data will be back up again soon, after we have confirmed NO OTHER infringements are there. We are also embarking on a process to more closely review partner data around the world. It’s sad that this happens. We are huge fans of OSM and hope to collaborate with OSM through the new license transition.

So thanks to the OSM members; Ivan Sanchez in Spain and Julio Costa in Chile who identified the problem and we commit to deal with any other suspicion just as fast. Thanks for Steve for knowing we would never do this willfully and letting us know this has happened in the past.

To map providers around the world, infringement is not only a crime but there is a large community out there monitoring your actions who will work together to find you.

And mostly to the OSM community, we are truly sorry. We work with our partners to protect their data rights and will now be more vigilant on evaluating their sources. We value your help and commit to protect your data rights as vigilantly as we protect our partner’s data, removing any infringement on your rights.

It seems you data for Ukraine is imported from Openstreetmap too. I clearly recognize some features that are available only in Openstreetmap and not in the maps from other providers. Could you fix this issue either by properly attributing the data or removing it?